The Speakers

Claire Crooks

Claire Crooks, Ph.D., is Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for School Mental Health at Western University in Ontario, Canada. Dr. Crooks has conducted research on the Fourth R, an evidence-based healthy relationships and violence prevention program designed for universal implementation in schools, and works with the Promoting Relationships & Eliminating Violence Network to promote capacity and accessibility for such programs. Dr. Crooks has collaborated with community partners to develop and evaluate culturally-relevant school-based mentoring programs for Indigenous youth to support mental well-being and identity development.

David DuBois

David DuBois, Ph.D., is Professor of Community Health Sciences and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Public Health at University of Illinois Chicago. Dr. DuBois, who also chairs the Research Board of the National Mentoring Resource Center, has published numerous influential studies on youth mentoring and has co-edited both editions of the Handbook of Youth Mentoring. His work includes collaborative research with Great Life Mentoring, a program specifically designed for youth experiencing mental health conditions.

Elizabeth Higley

Elizabeth Higley, is the Founder and Director of Great Life Mentoring, a research-based mental health intervention that enriches the lives of children from low-resource families receiving mental healthcare. Great Life Mentoring collaborates extensively with researchers to evaluate its effectiveness.

Noelle Hurd

Noelle Hurd, Ph.D., is the Scully Family Discovery Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Virginia. Dr. Hurd’s research focuses on the role of intergenerational relationships in supporting the healthy development of marginalized adolescents. Dr. Hurd has conducted numerous investigations of connections between natural mentoring relationships and the mental health, well-being, and academic success of African American youth. She has written about the need to center a social justice perspective in research and practice pertaining to youth mentoring relationships. Along with her research team, she has developed an intervention to foster the development of natural mentoring relationships between youth who lack them and adults in their everyday lives.

Martha McCormack

Martha McCormack, is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Social Work at Portland State University. Drawing on a 25-year career in publicly-funded mental health services for children and families, she has investigated the perceptions of parents on mentoring for youth with mental health needs. As an embedded doctoral researcher with a BBBS chapter, she conducted a study of parents of youth with mental health challenges who were in long-lasting matches. Her dissertation focuses on parent stress in relation to the parent-mentor working alliance in matches involving youth with mental health challenges.

Michelle Munson

Michelle Munson, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Silver School of Social Work at New York University. Dr. Munson has expertise on mental health services and the development and testing of interventions for adolescents and young adults with serious mental health conditions. She is interested in approaches, such as mentoring, that promote supportive social relationships and encourage service utilization. Dr. Munson authored the NMRC report entitled Mentoring for Youth with Mental Health Challenges.

Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller, Ph.D., is the Duncan and Cindy Campbell Professor for Children, Youth, and Families with an Emphasis on Mentoring and Director of the PSU Center for Interdisciplinary Mentoring Research. Professor Keller studies the development of mentoring relationships and initiatives to enhance the effectiveness of youth mentoring programs. He also directs a major NIH-funded research training program for undergraduates from backgrounds historically underrepresented in biomedical sciences.

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